Saudi to push OPEC to lift oil output, cut prices
(Reuters)

Reuters - Gulf Arab OPEC members led by Saudi Arabia will push for an increase in supplies at a meeting of the oil cartel this week in an effort to support flagging world economic growth by bringing crude prices back below $100 a barrel.

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VIENNA (Reuters) - Gulf Arab OPEC members led by Saudi Arabia will push for an increase in supplies at a meeting of the oil cartel this week in an effort to support flagging world economic growth by bringing crude prices back below $100 a barrel.

Gulf Arab OPEC members led by Saudi Arabia will push for an increase in supplies at a meeting of the oil cartel this week in an effort to support flagging world economic growth by bringing crude prices back below $100 a barrel.

Saudi Arabia
In a crucial development today, Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters that “The GCC reached a consensus,” referring to the Gulf Cooperation Council which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. “We are very confident that OPEC will have a unified position.”
According to Reuters’ sources, the GCC, led by Saudi Arabia, will push against slashing production.

LONDON/NEW YORK — Saudi Arabia is quietly telling the oil market it would be comfortable with much lower oil prices for an extended period, a sharp shift in policy that may be aimed at slowing the expansion of rival producers including those in the U.S. shale patch.
Some OPEC members including Venezuela are clamoring for production cuts to push oil prices back up above US$100 a barrel.

Submitted by Nick Cunningham of OilPrice.com
Is OPEC About To Surprise The Oil markets?
A day before the OPEC summit kicks off, top officials from the oil cartel say that the markets are moving in the right direction, a sign of confidence that suggests little could emerge from this week’s meeting.

Who could have seen this coming? With oil prices holding at 4-year lows, heavily pressuring around half of US shale production economics, the "secret" US deal (see here and here) with Saudi Arabia to crush Russia via oil over-supply in a slumping demand world appears to be backfiring rapidly for John Kerry and his strategery team.

While Saudi Arabia scrambles to boost the price of oil without undoing the policy it itself unleashed at the November 2014 OPEC meeting, its economy continues to founder as reported most recently on Sunday.

VIENNA: Nearly a year after oil markets entered a deep downward spiral, unmoored from the $100-a-barrel mark that had anchored them for years, some OPEC members are publicly talking for the first time about a new "fair" price for their crude. Oil ministers from Iraq, Venezuela and Angola said in Vienna this week that a price of $75 or $80 a barrel - barely $10 above the going rate - could be just fine. Iraq's Adel Abdel Mahdi said it would be "equitable". Privately, one Gulf OPEC delegate also told Reuters he reckons crude may be trading around this level next year, once markets rebalance.

Submitted by Artrhur Bermann via OilPrice.com, Oil prices should fall, possibly hard, in coming weeks. That is because fundamentals do not support the present price. Prices should fall to around $30 once the empty nature of an OPEC-plus-Russia production freeze is understood. A return to the grim reality of over-supply and the weakness of the world economy could push prices well into the $20s.

Oil traders should not lose too much sleep worrying about what OPEC, often unpredictable and quarrelsome in the past, will do when it meets next week.
The producer cartel, say delegates who attend meetings, is odds on to leave output policy unchanged. As a risk factor for oil markets, its May 31 gathering in Vienna barely features on traders’ radar.